F@%# GPS - WE'RE DOIN' IT LIVE!

Have I mentioned I'm small-town stock?

It's true.

Where this is most evident is with giving directions. I feel like I have gotten better, but I am no good at giving street names. I blame my small-town upbringing. Most of our roads didn't have names.

How do you get to someone's house? That's easy. Go into town to the one stop light, take a right - go up until you cross the river, then you'll take the third road on the left. It's easy to spot, they have a big purple mail box on the corner. You'll go a little ways on that road, there is a curve to the right and then it's just a little further down. They have a red barn. If you get to the T in the road next to Miller's pond, you've gone too far. Come on back the way you came and look for that red barn. You can't miss it really.

As a small child I was displaying my control freak tendencies already. Anxiety and paranoia are adorable when you're 5. I had this huge fear of being lost. If my parents were driving and they got lost, I would melt and start crying and saying, "Oh no! We're lost in the world!!"

I was no dummy - I had a globe, I knew how big that place was and how tiny we were. My grandma even showed me on an atlas how to use the legend to figure out miles...if we were lost in the world we were screwed! That was a big damn place.

Now if I grew up in po-dunk, grandma lived in BFE. We cut through the Sherburne wildlife refuge to get home after visiting her. There were no street lights, there was no such thing as GPS, and I couldn't read, but by god I would remember every damn turn we needed to take as we zigged and zagged our way home on the back roads. Clearly my parents could not be trusted. They'd gotten us lost one too many times for my liking. It was up to me to breadcrumb our whereabouts by snapping mental pictures as we went, so we'd never be lost in the world again.

It used to be a game for me.  My parents even got in on it  by saying at every 4-way stop, "Ok Joni - which way do we go?" I never got it wrong...the fate of our lives rested in my tiny little hands. It was up to me, and I'd be damned if I'd let us get lost in the world. Not on my watch! I still hate being lost, but I feel like I have a pretty damn good sense of direction. Even now, I may not know what all the streets are called, but I can angle my way back to the right major road, eventually. I've never gone in the wrong direction - I sometimes just take the scenic route.

So my parents eventually moved from po-dunk to BFE to be near my grandma. We go to BFE all the time, via major highways, but this past weekend I was challenged. We had to get from BFE via way of po-dunk to  get to 35 to go to Duluth.

Once we were leaving my parents I plugged Milaca into our GPS to see how it would route us.

"Turn right" said GPS, "Continue 5 miles"


Pff - I knew better. GPS was going to have us take major roads in an L shape to Milaca - when really there are plenty of diagonals we can take working our way there.

Me: "Take a right, but ignore GPS - we're takiing the next left."
Gabe: "Uh - ok."
Me: "This will be faster."
GPS: "Recalculating...continue 3 miles"
Me: "Ignore it - we're taking the next road."
Gabe: Umm..sure.
GPS: Recalculating...turn right.
Me: Ignore it.
Gabe: Do I turn right or left?
Me: Left!
GPS: Turn Right!

Well I had to turn that bitch off. She didn't know what she was talking about.

I continued to direct Gabe until we got to a major road. Then I doubted my abilities. These back roads looked the same but different. Trees were bigger, or gone all together, new housing developments all over the damn place...I wussed out. I had us take the rest of the L shape GPS was suggesting into Foley and follow 23 all the way into Milaca.

Cut to Tuesday and we're driving back to my parents to pick up puppy. The thing about 23 is it's two lanes, and you get stuck behind some cutlass cruiser just out to cruise and  you end up going 49 miles an hour, and I was in a mood to get my dog and get home. If we followed GPS we'd get to my parents house at 5.

The cool thing about back roads is no one is really on them. Unless you get stuck behind the manure wagon, you can pretty much go 70 miles an hour. (If my nephew is reading this, you NEVER go 70 miles an hour down country roads). Also it's fall -- no one has the manure wagons out - that gets done in the spring.

Me: Slow down.
Gabe: Why?
Me: We're going to take the back roads, and I want you to turn..."
Gabe: Where? On 16?
Me: I'm not sure, I'll know it when I see it...yeah...turn next to that pro-life billboard.
Gabe: Ok - on 16?
Me - I don't know what these roads are called.

We're burning ass down the road and I am marveling at how much everything has changed. We're zigging and zagging -- Turn right - then left, then right, then left.

After about 3 turns --

Me: I have no idea where we are.
Gabe: What?!
Me: Yeah - none of this is ringing a bell.
Gabe: Ok -- well, what are some of the roads we take?
Me: I keep telling you I have no idea what these roads are called. I'm not kidding. I DON'T know any of their names. None. of. them.
Gabe: Ok - we are coming up on 176th street...
Me: Pff -- these things were called Rural Route 2 when I was a kid.
Gabe: Should we take this next road coming up?
Me: No.
Gabe: How do you know?
Me: It's dirt - we don't take dirt roads. Dirt roads lead to butt-rape.
Gabe: Get the GPS.
Me: No -- no, it's cool...everything out here is set in a grid pattern around all the fields. As long as we keep working a south western direction we'll get there.
Gabe: Oh for the love of....just use the GPS.

Then I went all Bill O'Rilley (I don't really know why - I was feeling dramatic I guess) and I said, "F@&$ GPS - WE'RE DOING IT LIVE! Don't worry hun, I won't let anyone buttrape you today. Plus, I speak their language. You're safe with me. Oooh! Turn left!"

Gabe: You know where we are now?
Me: -
Gabe: ...
Me: Hmm...no.
Gabe: GPS?
Me: No - I still feel confident we're on the right track.

A few more turns later and I was confident I knew where we were going...mostly. I kept recognizing some roads, and large portions of other roads were just different. Bless his heart, Gabe kept trying to get street names out of me, but I just couldn't get them...the best I could do was "Turn by that yellow house"

Me: Oh slow down again. I feel like I want you to turn by that orange sign
Gabe: You feel...?
Me: Yes! Turn right.
Gabe: Ok and what caused you to recognize this?
Me: Well that road goes that way and is twisty, and this one has the pond, and we want to turn right by the pond."
Gabe: Seriously? What if the pond dries up?!
Me: Well it hasn't...besides the twisty road going in the opposite direction gives it away.
Gabe: The twisty road!
Me: Yes -- but this is good it means we are back on course I know where I am now! We're almost there!

We came to another four way stop.

Gabe: Do I turn?
Me: No - go straight. I recognize that horse.
Gabe: Wow - how about that other horse?
Me: No - he must be new.
Gabe: *just shakes his head*
Me: This is good, I totally know where we are now.
Gabe: Great - so what's the next road I am taking?
Me: No idea. We're taking a left by the turkey barn.
Gabe: Shit - I do remember the turkey barn.
Me: See! We're not lost any more! We take this road, it's going to have a sharp curve to the right, we go over a bridge and we take the first left by the big red barn! Then we're there! You can't miss it.

Let the record show - we were at my parents house by 4.